And a ship, at that: the Testors (ex-Hawk) LST (left), reputedly in 1:600 scale, comprising only about 30 pieces (right) - half of which are the 40mm guns with their tubs. All molded in icy, translucent white plastic - which makes it remarkably hard even to see what the hell you've got! So, after sinking a mounting nut in the keel (top-right), the first step was to paint everything black (bottom-right) - at least, on the insides/undersides.

And the very next step was to replace half the cheesey, detail parts :

And to add back about twice as many more, in upgrades and additional details. The single- and twin 40mms - sorry I (for some reason) didn't take better closeups of them - were chopped from Matty's Models resin quad-40s, and likewise the (three sizes of) gun tubs and rafts were Matt Stein Models prototypes, as well. Between them, the guns and tubs made all the difference in the world! And the rafts, though admittedly overscale, still looked pretty good along the otherwise bare deck of the LST. Equally important were numerous PE details from 540-500-scale Gold Medal Models frets - and even some snippets from their 240-scale (Buckley/4-piper) fret, for larger structural members - as well as beautiful droop-line railings from the Dragon (deluxe) San Diego (nominally 700-scale) kit.

Again, I should've taken more pics of these going on, but here are just a couple I did snag:

The gun tubs (left) and the guns (not shown) got generous washes of black, which really picked out their (plentiful) texture detail. And the bridge tower - OOB just a square castle - got a fringing platform, capped with an awning (right) comprised of a PE frame (top), its spaces filled by with white glue (bottom) which tightened up while drying to simulate a very realistic-looking canvass top. On- and around the pilothouse had been ladder moldings (not shown) which, if not quite "Aztech Stairs" were pretty close: "Inca Stairs", perhaps - and you can see what a difference replacing them with PE ladders, and adding hatches and liferings, plus drilling open a door and some portholes made, all together. Likewise, on the main deck (left), the vent stacks (looking distinctly underscale) were drilled out, to look far less like tree stumps. Tamiya spray Dark Ghost Gray was a pretty good approximation - taking into consideration the "scale effect" - for WWII USN Haze Gray.

Although depicting my friend Fred's LST-610, I wanted to paint her as she looked just before he went aboard: when she served in the Leyte landing. Which camo was undoubtedly very much like that seen on her sister, LST-609, at Leyte. Using my "Extracted Bead" masking technique, the first overspray - Testors SAC Bomber Tan - did not feather well at all, so for the next (Tamiya Gray-Green (IJN)) I really laid the latex bead on thick (top). Likewise for the final color - Testors Euro I Gray - although the fine stripes in this color remained very difficult to feather, so small. Throughout, the main deck remained fully masked (top) - a pity, as you can already see the camo carryover started to look very interesting. Such thick latex took hours to dry, before ready to seal with clearcoat, to reduce sticking by the masking tape (bottom) - which time I used to carefully add rudders, chopped pretty much straight from some Mirage 400-scale U-boat rudders.

But the remarkable thing about this build is that I worked on it exclusively - straight through - to actually finish it:

Click on Image for FULL RES

And this is (at least) how good this kit - which costs about 5 bucks (if that), and could be assembled (including seam-filling and painting) in an hour or two - can look, given some extra effort and upgrade parts. I put in two full weekends - which could have been shortened to one, with a less demanding paint job and better pre-planning: e.g., lining up all the PE bits, rather than rifling through my entire stash each time a new one was needed.

Of course I'll take a bunch of (much better) pics from all angles, and post 'em here soon!

Thanks, Don! Apparently, all those Testors repops were done in that bizarre, milky-white plastic - at least, all the ones I've found were. Recall the very nice little build of their Fletcher mold by Ricky Reyes. He used SkyWave "700" scale detail parts - which are actually true 1:600 (even though that hull scales out closer to 700). My idea with this LST was much the same, except using my own upgrades.

Finally in this "series", Testors also repopped their USCG cutter - I have one - and I think it's also in (at least close to) 600-scale. I might try to knock that out by the end of the month, for this year's Garry Beebe memorial build. You gonna join me in one of those this year, Donny?